Rubin - Mearsheimer’s Conspiracies Get Wackier

Michael Rubin..
Commentary/Contentions..
19 March '12..


On Sunday, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired a feature examining the special relationship between Israel and the United States. The special included three academics and John Mearsheimer, of The Israel Lobby fame. Mearsheimer outdid himself.

Mearsheimer’s misreads why successive U.S. administrations embraced Israel from the Kennedy administration onwards. President Eisenhower, of course, sought to cast his lot with the Arabs—handing Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdul Nasser his greatest victory—but learned quickly that Arab states made poor allies. Israel may have been only one state among many in the Middle East, but each White House quickly learned that against the context of the Cold War, Israel had America’s back.

As Mearsheimer heads to the present day, he rehashes his usual talking “It’s also important to recognize that supporters of Israel have great influence in the American media,” he claims although, fortunately, he leaves out the lobby’s penchant for making Hamantaschen from the blood of Christian children.

That Mearsheimer claims, “there’s no meaningful Arab lobby” is risible, however. If one accepts Mearsheimer’s definition that “the lobby is a loose coalition of individuals and groups that work actively to push US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction,” then Mearsheimer might be called part of the “Hamas lobby” in America, as he and his friends seek to push the United States in the opposite direction.

Glick - Mainstreaming anti-Semitism

Caroline Glick..
Column One..
JPost..
19 January '12..



Today’s anti-Semitism is predicated on preferring Palestinian and pan-Arab nationalism to Jewish nationalism.

Anti-Semitism may not yet be a litmus test for social acceptability in the US, but it has certainly become acceptable.

Proof of this dismal state of affairs came this week with the publication of a supportive profile of University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer in The Atlantic monthly written by the magazine’s in-house foreign policy guru Robert Kaplan.

Mearsheimer is the author, together with Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government’s Prof.

Stephen Walt, of the infamous 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Since the book’s publication, Mearsheimer has become one of the most high-profile anti-Semites in America.

Kaplan’s article was a clear bid to rehabilitate Mearsheimer in order to advance his pre-Israel Lobby theory of realism in international affairs.

Mearsheimer’s realist theory argues that the international arena exists in a state of perpetual anarchy. As a consequence, the factor motivating states’ actions in international affairs is their national interests. Morality, he claims, has no place in international affairs.

This theory’s considerable intellectual underpinning rendered Mearsheimer one of the most prominent political scientists in America during the 1990s. As a realist himself, particularly in relation to the rise of China as a superpower, Kaplan perhaps believed that by rehabilitating Mearsheimer, he would advance his goal of convincing US policy-makers to adopt a realist approach to China.

But whatever his motivations for writing the profile, and whatever its eventual impact on US policy towards China, Kaplan’s profile of Mearsheimer served to mainstream a Jew-hater and in so doing, to give credibility to his bigotry.

John Mearsheimer: Often in error, never in doubt

Alex Safian PHD
CAMERA
12 November '10

Professor John Mearsheimer, since co-authoring The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, has written extensively about Israel's military and diplomatic history, often displaying in all this work a surprising unfamiliarity with basic facts that are well-known to specialists in the field.

Perhaps this is because Mearsheimer and his co-author Stephen Walt seemingly shy away from the basic research that is the stock-in-trade of most historians and political scientists. For example, in writing about the alleged power of the "Israel Lobby" to coerce and influence U.S. policymakers, there is no evidence that they actually talked to any actual U.S. policymakers, whether serving or retired. Walt and Mearsheimer seem strangely uninterested in whether these policymakers believe that they were forced by the "Lobby" to pursue policies at variance with U.S. interests.

And when they do try to deal with facts, the historical examples they cite often actually contradict their claims, and show the U.S. (quite reasonably, since this is what countries usually do) pursuing its own interests with little regard for the policies favored by Israel.

A case in point can be found in Mearsheimer's speech this summer titled "Israel's Nukes Harm US National Interests." To support the claim of his title, Mearsheimer offers his version of the 1973 war (which was provoked by simultaneous attacks against Israel by Egypt and Syria).

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Where Does Goldstone Fit in Mearsheimer’s List?

Emanuele Ottolenghi
Contentions/Commentary
09 May '10

So here’s a question for John Mearsheimer. As Noah Pollak pointed out not so long ago, John Mearsheimer classified Jews into three categories — new Afrikaner Jews, righteous Jews, and the “great ambivalent in the middle.” In his useful lists, he included one Judge Richard Goldstone among the noble ones. And so, in light of the revelations about Judge Goldstone to which Jennifer Rubin referred earlier on today, one is left to wonder. Where would Mearsheimer now put Goldstone — among the “New Afrikaner” or the “Righteous”? Maybe we should create a separate category — Old Afrikaner but Righteous? Good Ol’ Afrikaner?

Is he a Righteous Afrikaner because he bashes Israel after having hung a few Africans — the bashing makes him righteous, the hanging makes him Afrikaner?

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John Mearsheimer’s speech on Jews: Echoes of the 1930s

Meryl Yourish
Yourish.com
02 May '10

Let’s take a walk through history and compare the speech that John Mearsheimer gave to the Palestine Center with a few historical speeches given by two other men who claimed they had nothing, really, against the Jews. Mearsheimer titled his speech “The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. New Afrikaners.”

John Mearsheimer:

On the other side we have the new Afrikaners, who will support Israel even if it is an apartheid state. These are individuals who will back Israel no matter what it does, because they have blind loyalty to the Jewish state. This is not to say that the new Afrikaners think that apartheid is an attractive or desirable political system, because I am sure that many of them do not. Surely some of them favor a two-state solution and some of them probably have a serious commitment to liberal values. The key point, however, is that they have an even deeper commitment to supporting Israel unreservedly.

Charles Lindbergh:

The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration. … As I have said, these war agitators comprise only a small minority of our people; but they control a tremendous influence. Against the determination of the American people to stay out of war, they have marshaled the power of their propaganda, their money, their patronage.

John Mearsheimer:

…no American president can put meaningful pressure on Israel to force it to change its policies toward the Palestinians. The main reason is the Israel lobby, a remarkably powerful interest group that has a profound influence on U.S. Middle East policy. Alan Dershowitz was spot on when he said, “My generation of Jews . . . became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy.” That lobby, of course, makes it impossible for any president to play hardball with Israel, especially on the issue of settlements.

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So which category of Jew are you?

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
02 May '10

Mark 2010 as the year it became acceptable for a professor who serves as the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago to deliver a lecture that proposes how to define, and distinguish between, various categories of Jews.

So are you curious to find out if you qualify for the category of "righteous Jew", or whether you will find yourself denounced as one of the Jewish "new Afrikaners"? Or will you perhaps be counted as part of the "great ambivalent middle"?

Anyone interested in understanding the issue in its full academic "depth" (think "bottom of the barrel") might want to consult the original lecture of Professor John Mearsheimer, who introduced these categories when he delivered the Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC, on 29 April 2010.

First, it is important to note the title of Professor Mearsheimer's lecture: "The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. New Afrikaners". When you read or listen to the relatively long lecture, you will see that the part where he explains how he categorizes Jews (or, to be precise, "American Jews who care deeply about Israel") comes only toward the end of the lecture. Up to this point, Mearsheimer presents his reasoning - based on highly selective facts, misrepresentations and cherry-picked polls - for his conclusion that "there is going to be a Greater Israel between the Jordan and the Mediterranean."

Mearsheimer then sets out to speculate about the question who will live in the "Greater Israel" he predicts and what kind of political system will be adopted in this entity. After devoting a few paragraphs to insinuating that Israel is only too eager to find some pretext to expel "massive numbers of Palestinians from Greater Israel", Mearsheimer argues that in his view, the "most likely outcome in the absence of a two-state solution is that Greater Israel will become a full-fledged apartheid state."

It is in this context that he turns to the question of whether American Jews and the "lobby" would continue to support Israel, and he then proceeds to offer his advice on how to categorize "American Jews who care deeply about Israel" - and it is truly revealing that it is this issue that gets highlighted in the lecture's title.

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Mearsheimer Makes a List

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
30 April '10

John Mearsheimer gave a speech at the Palestine Center in Washington yesterday and called Israel an apartheid state that has practiced ethnic cleansing and will likely practice it in the future. For Mearsheimer, this is standard practice. But he added a new twist: he separated American Jews into three categories: “Righteous Jews,” “New Afrikaners,” and a middle group of Jews who aren’t quite sure whether they’re righteous or ethnic cleansers. These are Mearsheimer’s Righteous Jews:

To give you a better sense of what I mean when I use the term righteous Jews, let me give you some names of people and organizations that I would put in this category. The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.

And then there are America’s Afrikaner Jews, who are not just apologists for apartheid and ethnic cleansing, but are actually a fifth column. Note that he goes beyond the normal “dual loyalty” trope and says that these American Jews are “blindly loyal” only to Israel:

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